1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to devices for receiving, storing, and disposing of small objects, particularly used and disposable surgical sharps.
2. Description of Prior Art
Modern surgical procedures often involve the use of disposable surgical implements including sharps such as needles and scalpel blades. Many surgical sutures are provided to the surgeon in short lengths with disposable needles attached to one or both ends by swaging or other means. Such armed sutures are preferred by surgeons because the needles are always new and sharp, and the attached needles cause less tissue disruption than occurs with an eyed needle.
Upon completion of a suturing procedure with an armed suture, the needle is cut or otherwise removed from the suture and discarded. Since some surgical procedures may involve 20 or 30 or more individual sutures, there may be a large number of needles to be accounted for and disposed of after the operation. In addition, there may be various disposable scalpel blades, hypodermic needles, lances, and the like which are also discarded after use.
Good surgical practice requires that all surgical implements used in a surgical procedure be accounted for upon completion of the procedure. To simplify this accounting procedure, various devices for receiving and disposing of needles and other small surgical implements have been proposed in the prior art. U.S. Pat. No. 3,944,069, for example, provides an adhesive coated pad upon which the needles may be deposited and which may be folded in half to enclose the needles after the operation. The pad of this patent, however, does not provide for organization of the discarded implements to facilitate counting, nor does it allow the discarded implements to be viewed or recounted once the pad is closed.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,008,802 describes a pad of resilient material having raised ridges through which needles can be inserted, with consecutively numbered zones to facilitate counting of the needles. Once filled, however, the pad is folded in half to enclose the needles and later verification of the needle count cannot be readily made.
It is accordingly an object of the present invention to provide a receiver for small, disposable surgical implements which automatically organizes the implements for counting, and which permits the discarded implements to be identified and recounted after the receiver is sealed. A further object of this invention is to provide a receiver which allows the user flexibility in adapting the receiver to accept a large number of small items or a lesser number of larger items. These and other objects of this invention will become apparent from the ensuing description and claims.